Chelsea Manning Makes A HUGE Announcement…

There is a new name looking to make noise in the Democratic Party by challenging a powerful establishment incumbent – Chelsea Manning has launched a run for one of Maryland’s U.S. Senate seats.

The former United States Army soldier was convicted of passing hundreds of thousands of classified military and government documents to whistleblower organization WikiLeaks in 2010 and was subsequently sentenced to thirty-five years in a military prison.

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Manning became a hero to the identity politics-obsessed left when he came out as a transgender and changed his name from Bradley to Chelsea. Today he/she has achieved celebrity status with that part of the party base that has elevated transgender issues to something only slightly below a religion.

Former President Obama did the man who many view as a traitor a solid by commuting her sentence to time served plus four months before he left office. Manning was thus spared decades of prison time.

Manning filed the paperwork to run for the Senate on Thursday. He will be looking to topple Beltway favorite Ben Cardin in the primary for the 2018 election.

Manning, a 30-year-old Oklahoma native, had previously lived in Montgomery County before enlisting in the Army and eventually facing a court-martial for leaking classified and sensitive information. She moved back to Maryland last year after President Barack Obama commuted her 35-year sentence in the final days of his administration.

She is at least the fourth candidate lined up to unseat Cardin, according to state election records, but by far the most well known. Previously known as Bradley Manning, she has been held up as a heroic whistle-blower by some and maligned as a traitor by others for revealing information about military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and about detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Cardin, who served 20-year tenures in the Maryland House of Delegates and the U.S. House of Representatives before succeeding retiring U.S. Sen. Paul Sarbanes in 2007, is not considered particularly vulnerable to challenge.

He had an approval rating of 50 percent as recently as October, according to Morning Consult. That was around the middle of the pack for all senators and 2 percentage points higher than Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who won the race to replace former Sen. Barbara Mikulski in 2016.

Cardin’s campaign had about $2 million on hand as of Sept. 30, according to federal campaign finance records.

A spokesperson for Cardin said he “is looking forward to a vigorous debate of the issues and a robust conversation with Maryland voters.”

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The controversial Manning is slowly gaining more street cred with other elements of the left. She was hailed by many for an obscene “F*** the Police” tweet sent out to coincide with Law Enforcement Appreciation Day last week.

Manning’s odds of beating Cardin are practically nonexistent but she is young and only in the nascent stages of a political career that could last decades.

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Donn Marten is a libertarian critic of corrupt entrenched power and the civil liberties shredding police state that protects it. He is a freelance writer based out of the Tampa Bay area where he currently resides with his family.